New Bonneville Salt Flats Book Captures More Than Speed

Long-time HOT ROD readers know we’re in love with Bonneville Speed Week. It is the very essence of hot rodding, and its foundations were but a part in the creation of the very magazine you love to read.

Photographer Peter Vincent was inspired the same way HOT ROD was, but then he began to appreciate his surroundings and see the salt flats as something bigger: one of light and landscape in addition to speed and culture. Now, after 20 consecutive years visiting the salty plain, he has selected a number of portraits for The Bonneville Salt Flats: Two Decades of Photography.

Vincent’s passion for photography is reflected in the landscape that surrounds the friends he’s made and the intriguing cars and bikes that utilize ingenuity to go faster. He created this book to be an enjoyable read for land speed junkies and fans of hot rodding, the American West, or just plain ol’ photography.

"I have yet to run out of inspiration with the landscape and the people," Vincent says. "The minimal and formalistic nature of this area of the country keeps pulling me further and further into the strange interchange it has with the subculture . . . I respect the builders and racers as much as the artists, so it is a blending of the genres. I have also driven the course twice, which helped me to understand that driving passion, or 'salt fever'."

At 272 pages and $85, Vincent’s book is substantial on many levels, but that may be the cost of a man chasing his art – no different than one chasing speed down a salty corridor without boundaries. For more information, visit Stance & Speed's website.